Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Now I must confess that I’ve been known to make the occasional joke that turns out to be mildly inappropriate.

Shocking, isn’t it?

The problem when you write humor is that there’s sometimes a fine line between “funny” and “what the hell?”

Case in point, my debut novel MAKING WAVES has a scene in which the hero and heroine are on the balcony of a hotel overhearing the world’s most awkward tryst on the beach below. I was going for a combination of humor and “this shouldn’t be a turn-on but kinda is.”

It was apparent from my agent’s reaction that I’d missed my mark.

“I don’t even know what this phrase is supposed to mean,” she emailed.

“That’s the point – it’s funny, you know?”

Um, no. Apparently it was funny for a few lines. Not for a few pages. The scene got trimmed, and rightfully so.

I’d like to say I only do this in writing and would never have my humor fall flat in real life, but then I’d be both a liar and a pervert.

About a month ago, I was at a friend’s party with several strangers. A gentleman struck up a conversation with me about his friend who makes beautiful, hand-carved wine bottle stoppers, and asked what shape I thought would be most marketable.

“A penis,” I told him for reasons I can no longer recall that probably seemed funny at the time.

There was some discussion about length and girth, and at one point the party’s hostess joined in and we all had a good laugh about it.

A few weeks later, the hostess called. “Remember that guy who was talking to us about the wine bottle stoppers?”

“Um, vaguely.”

“I have something for you.”Yes indeed, this stranger took it upon himself to go to his artist friend and request a hand-carved wooden phallus for my wine bottles. And the artist didn’t stop at merely carving. As you can see, he hand-stitched this lovely leather scrotum, complete with two disturbingly lifelike testicles.

The creator was very proud of his work, and though I hadn’t actually planned to purchase such fine custom artwork in the immediate future, I was compelled to cough up the cash and admit that my joke had fallen a bit flat.

So now I have a wine stopper that spends most of its time hidden in a drawer, and a more finely-tuned appreciation for my need to think twice when I think I’m being funny.

How about you? Ever made a joke that’s fallen flat? Or one that’s forced you to purchase a hand-carved wooden phallus? Please share in the comments.

So, do you ever watch "Good Eats" with Alton Brown? He's always preaching against "uni-taskers" (appliances/gadgets that have only one function) in the kitchen. I'm thinking he might *cough* approve of your stopper.

PPS. My humour falls flat all the time. I live in Japan where I'm surrounded by Japanese (duh), Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians, etc. You'd be surprised how different our humour is... So often, we're like "Oh you HAVE to see this thing on youtube!" and then the others don't get it.

Cynthia, judging from the level of detail (who thinks to add a hand-stitched leather scrotum?!) I'm guessing the artist was pleased with the request.

Patrick, I will be waiting on the edge of my seat for your fart joke, and I will expect to fall off said seat in order to roll on the floor with laughter.

Harley May, I suspect you and I could get into a lot of trouble together.

Claire Dawn, loved your "16 letters" blog post! Thanks for the mention. I lived in Venezuela for awhile after college, and I was always surprised at how un-funny I was. Every joke I made in Spanish fell completely flat.

Debra, ouch. That hurts just to think about. And thanks to you, I'll be thinking about it all day.

I work in a large one story building that used to be a K-Mart. My building is an inbound call center. It takes nine weeks to get through the training program, then a couple of years to perfect the use of the programs on the PCs. People at my end of the building are the seniors (5+ years) and people at the west end are the noobs.

A plane flew so low over us one day it sounded ominous. My boss said, "I hope it doesn't hit the building."

I replied quite loudly, "If it does, it better hit the west end. They're easier to replace."

I tend to have a sarcastic sense of humor - which, unfortunately, people don't seem to get most of the time. Although, none of my attempts have ever given me anything like your winestopper. I must do better in the future.

This is HILARIOUS. This is how I try to live my life. Taking jokes too far. So few will take them this far with me though. I once took it so far with a friend we got half married in Vegas (we registered and got a license but didn't do the ceremony so it expired after a year. Thank gawd.) Yeah...